It would no longer be possible for a doctor, nurse or teacher currently on the public payroll to lose their job for wearing a cross or hijab in the workplace in a toned down “values charter” presented Thursday by Bernard Drainville.

But, in the future, new hires would not have such a right and would have to understand the state must not only be secular it must appear to be, Drainville said.

Conceding the original Parti Québécois government’s charter of values tried to change too much too fast, Drainville — a candidate for the party leadership — retreated on several key elements of the original bill he tried to steer into law while minister of democratic institutions in the former government.

He said his new package better respects the body of opinion on the matter.

My objective is to rally a certain number of people who were against the charter

“My objective is to rally a certain number of people who were against the charter,” Drainville told reporters at a news conference. “I want to create a greater consensus.”

“We have to go more gradually. That’s one of the lessons I got in this debate.”

Gone from Drainville’s vision is the possibility under the old charter of someone losing their job for refusing to leave their religious garb at home when they walked into work.

Drainville’s new “values charter 2.0,” instead proposes to grandfather the rights of people who are already employed by institutions that would be affected by the charter.

“I am saying I got the message [from Quebecers]. I understand when you said you did not want to see anyone lose their job.”

The ban would only apply to new employees if and when the charter is adopted — which also assumes the PQ will be back in power in four years.

His efforts to stir up the values pot did not go over well with the Liberal government or other opposition members.

From England, where he is on a trade mission, Premier Philippe Couillard said the PQ has a “strange set of priorities,” in wanting to talk about the charter when the real priority for Quebecers is the economy.

In an interview, Québec solidaire MNA Françoise David ripped Drainville, saying even with his attempt to make the charter easier to swallow, the debate would invariably veer into the ban on religious symbols. And that distracts people from the real issue, which is fighting religious fundamentalism.

Drainville’s idea of applying the ban to new workers also doesn’t make sense and unfairly targets women who overwhelmingly dominate the health and education sectors, she said.

nosvaleurs.gouv.qc.caAn image released by the Quebec government showing "ostentatious" symbols that would be banned under the proposed charter.

“What do we do with the young Muslim woman studying today to be a nurse in the future?” David asked. “We are slamming the door on her.”

David’s view on the ban is that Quebec should stick with the old Bouchard-Taylor commission’s formula, which would only ban authority figures such as judges, police officers and prison officials from wearing religious symbols.

But Drainville makes another key concession from the old charter.

While his new ban on religious symbols would still apply to the entire public sector — including judges, police officers, prison agents, health-care workers, doctors, elementary and high school teachers and public daycare workers — he drops CEGEPs, universities and municipalities from the list.

Drainville retreated in those areas — which drew staunch opposition in the old charter — arguing they want to maintain their independence. Now Drainville wants these establishments to create their own internal religious-neutrality policies.

They don’t want democracy. They don’t want equality between men and women. We can’t let them dictate our actions

Under questioning, however, Drainville revealed that an exemption clause from the old bill (Bill 60 incorporated the charter) would stand, allowing certain institutions, such as the Jewish General Hospital, to be exempt from the values charter on religious grounds.

Unlike the day in August 2013 when Drainville presented the original charter, this operation was far more modest and did not include any of the pictograms or teams of experts on hand to answer complex questions.

Sitting alone behind a table at the National Assembly press gallery, Drainville said he has fewer resources at his disposal.

However, other familiar themes of the old bill are back: Drainville wants to amend the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms to include state neutrality and create a framework for religious accommodation, and no person could deliver or receive government services with a covered face.

Drainville faced questions about the timing of his announcement on a religious issue so soon after the tragedy in Paris where 20 people died. He argued he had made a promise to present a new charter in December. Failing to act in the wake of Paris would be like caving in to extremism.

“Any delay amounts to saying the extremists are right,” Drainville said. “They don’t want democracy. They don’t want equality between men and women. We can’t let them dictate our actions.”

He insisted the new charter had little to do with the PQ leadership campaign, in which he’s trailing badly. He said as the minister responsible for the charter in the old Pauline Marois government, he felt he had a responsibility to carry on the work because it’s necessary.

And he dismissed the theory that the old charter, which divided Quebecers and sparked social strife, had anything to do with the PQ’s electoral loss after only 18 months in office.

Comparison of Drainville’s charter proposals

PQ’s original charter

• The ban on ostentatious religious symbols in the workspace was sweeping and applied to the entire public sector including justice, health and education. The bill defined the symbols as “overt and conspicuous,” which meant a tiny crucifix or small ring with the Star of David or earring was fine, but anything big was not.

• The bill provided for a five-year exemption from the ban for CEGEPs, universities, health care and municipalities. In the uproar, many institutions said they would use the exemption.

• Private schools and non-subsidized daycare centres were not covered.

• It would be mandatory to have one’s face uncovered while providing or receiving a state service.

• In the name of religious heritage, the giant crucifix on Mont Royal and other religious symbols in the public space — such as the crucifix over

the speaker’s chair in the blue room of the National Assembly — would remain. Employees would still be allowed office Christmas trees.

• Amend the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms to entrench religious neutrality of the state and the secular nature of institutions.

Drainville charter

• The big change in the proposal is the so-called grandfather clause. That means that while the plan is still to ban conspicuous religious symbols in the whole public sector, existing workers would have acquired rights and not have to respect the rules.

• Implicit in the new package is that no employee thus could be fired for refusing to comply, which emerged as the real stumbling block for the short-lived PQ government.

• The new ban would thus only apply to new hires. As Drainville stated, working for the government carries with it responsibilities and one of them is to not express, or display, one’s personal convictions.

• Respecting their independence, Drainville said the new ban would not apply to CEGEPs, universities and municipalities. They would, however, be required to adopt their own internal religious neutrality policies.

• Added to the charter would be the creation of an observatory on religious fundamentalism and a 1-800 phone line where people could report honour crimes.

• The National Assembly crucifix could be moved elsewhere in the legislature if MNAs vote to do so.

For many months before, and now during, Quebec’s ongoing provincial election campaign, the governing Parti Québécois has been coy about what, exactly, would happen to public-sector workers who chose to continue wearing “ostentatious” religious garb or symbols while on the job. The practice, which would be banned under the PQ’s proposed secularism charter, would not impact a huge number of people. But the party’s refusal to say how they envisioned them being affected raised many questions.

Consider them answered. In the final days of campaigning ahead of Monday’s vote, the PQ has finally acknowledged what critics of the charter had always insisted was the case: Any member of the civil service, be it a brain surgeon or filing clerk, would be fired if he or she insisted on wearing a veil, kippa or turban at work. The firings would not be immediate, as the charter would be phased in over time, giving religious Quebecers time to voluntarily — if that’s the word — leave the public service or reassess the essentialness of their offending garment or symbol. But for those who refused to alter their dress to conform to the PQ’s standard of secularism, termination is where that process would ultimately end.

The PQ is happy to talk about how seriously it takes Quebec’s heritage, but it would have preferred to avoid talking about these ugly measures. Firing an otherwise qualified employee because of a sincerely held conviction is an outrageous assault on religious liberty, which is no doubt why the PQ has also recently acknowledged it may need to resort to the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause to enact it. Without that cover, such a law would never survive in Canadian courts.

Having been forced to admit what her party’s plan would actually entail, Premier Pauline Marois tried to put a positive spin on it. This week, she suggested the government would assist any civil servant fired under the charter in finding a new job in the private sector. “We believe it is possible to find pathways to steer these people to other jobs that match their skills, because [the charter] does not touch the private sector,” Ms. Marois told a Montreal radio station.

Related

Well, that makes sense. After months of the PQ government treating loyal citizens as hostile enemy aliens because of their sincerely held religious convictions, implying they’re unable to conduct professional affairs in a neutral and unbiased manner, what could possibly seem strange about then helping them find new jobs? In the backs of shops all across the province, tucked somewhere out of sight, teachers and physicians, with years of education and on-the-job experience, can look forward to stocking shelves in their new, government-sourced jobs in dépanneurs, bistros, and elsewhere in Quebec’s famously robust private sphere (so long as they speak French, of course). Why, it’s the least Quebec’s newly secularized provincial government could do for all those suddenly deemed unfit for public service.

Would the government ensure these new jobs for the province’s stubborn faithful paid a comparable salary? Would it reimburse citizens who invested thousands of dollars in education and training, who are suddenly unable to advance their (new) careers? Would it somehow protect the accumulated seniority of former public employees?

The PQ clearly feels the urge to say something, lest it spend the final days of the campaign explaining why the government of Quebec will be terminating qualified employees

It’s a safe bet the answer to those questions is no, no and no. And for a good reason — it wouldn’t make any sense. (Besides, if the PQ government had had any luck creating jobs in the private sector, it probably wouldn’t have had to campaign on the charter in the first place.) But polls show Quebecers are uneasy with firing religious public servants, so the PQ clearly feels the urge to say something, lest it spend the final days of the campaign explaining why the government of Quebec will be terminating qualified judge, police officers, surgeons and teachers.

In fact, that’s exactly how the PQ should be spending the final days of the campaign. The party can try to gussy it up with vague promises to transition ex-civil servants, but there’s no hiding the ugliness of its charter. It’s up to the voters of Quebec to declare, with their ballots, that they won’t be fooled by Ms. Marois’ preposterous assurances and divisive vision of society.

He did so in rather spectacular fashion, telling a Quebec radio station the PQ’s charter of values would not just ban the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols by public-sector workers, it would force university students to remove face-covering garments, such as the niqab or burka.

Citing testimony from Montreal’s Concordia University at the National Assembly in January it accommodates “a handful” of its students who wear the niqab, which covers the face except for the eyes, Mr. Drainville said a law is needed to prohibit the practice.

Mr. Drainville said the prohibition is necessary for reasons of security and identification, and would apply to all people receiving government services.

Asked by the Radio X host whether a woman calling the police would have to remove her niqab before she could get help, Mr. Drainville said an exception could be made in extreme circumstances.

“She will have to uncover herself, but if you tell me she is unconscious and needs help, we will look after everyone. We have never let anyone fall through the cracks in Quebec,” he said.

“When you ask a bureaucrat, a police officer, when you show up at a courthouse, in a classroom, in a hospital, in a daycare, the minimum is that you do it with your face uncovered.”

‘Excuse me, but we are going to stop apologizing for existing in Quebec’

Mr. Drainville is hoping the charter, which polls show enjoys the support of a majority of Quebecers, will lift the PQ’s sagging fortunes.

An Ipsos Reid poll broadcast Wednesday by CTV showed the Liberals with the support of 37%, compared with 32% for the PQ. It was the second poll in as many days to put them ahead.

“If Quebecers want to have a charter of values, they have to vote for the Parti Québécois, because we are the only party supporting the charter,” Mr. Drainville told a news conference Wednesday.

In his interview with Radio X, he appealed to Quebecers’ pride as a reason to back the charter.

“Excuse me, but we are going to stop apologizing for existing in Quebec,” he said.

“We are going to be proud of our values. I think that with this charter, we are making an important decision for the future of Quebec.”

REUTERS/Omar IbrahimSyrian refugees receive humanitarian aid from an Islamic organization in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, March 6, 2012. United Nations (U.N.) humanitarian affairs chief Valerie Amos said on Monday that the Syrian government had agreed to allow her to visit the conflict-wracked country later this week, an announcement that followed sharp international criticism of Damascus for not letting her into the country. The U.N. says that over 7,500 civilians have died in Syria's nearly year-long crackdown on protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad

The alternative to the charter is ghettoization, with different communities living according to their own rules, he said.

“At a certain point we have to have a society that shares common values.”

At the legislature hearings in January, Mr. Drainville expressed disbelief Concordia had set up procedures to verify the identity of a “very small number” of niqab-wearing students before they wrote exams.

Benoit-Antoine Bacon, Concordia’s provost and vice-president of academic affairs, made no apologies.

“We are proud of the diversity of our community and of the way we all work and teach together in harmony,” he said in a statement after the hearing. “We’re not comfortable with denying access to education because of the way people dress. We’re just not.”

Because his mandate does not involve domestic issues, Bennett said he can’t offer a personal opinion of the Quebec legislation that would bar people who wear hijabs, turbans, yarmulkes and large crucifixes from working in the public sector.

But he does reject any attempt to compare the persecution of minorities abroad with what’s happening in Quebec.

“People in countries overseas where religious freedom is being violated are being imprisoned, tortured, killed because of their faith,” Bennett said in an interview during a trip to Washington.

“In Canada, we have the courts. We have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. … We can advance religious freedom overseas because we enjoy it in Canada. So that’s the approach that I take.”

He shared the Turkish anecdote in an interview looking back on his first year in the job and ahead to some of his priorities for the second year.

He began that second year in Washington and meetings with the Dalai Lama, think-tanks and his American counterparts.

Key differences between his new position and its older American equivalent were explored at a panel discussion Tuesday with a colleague from the U.S. Commission on International and Religious Freedom, organized by the Berkeley Center’s Religious Freedom Project.

Bennett was asked whether his organization will even survive beyond the Harper government.

He said that is always a risk when it comes to political appointments, but the government’s decision to name him, a non-partisan civil servant and place his office in Foreign Affairs gives the job a greater chance of long-term success.

He was also asked how he’d avoid “clientilism,” the tendency to choose countries to criticize, depending on whether Canada has financial and political interests there.

Bennett said Harper government has repeatedly made clear that it’s willing to disagree with major allies and not “go along to get along.”

He cited China as a case in point.

Bennett met the Dalai Lama in Washington, without first co-ordinating it with the Chinese. The two discussed the ability of Tibetan Buddhists to practice their faith. They didn’t talk about Tibetan independence.

“Canada is very consistent in having a one-China policy,” he said. “In my interactions that I’ve had with Tibetan Buddhists, or Uyghur Muslims in Canada … I always focus on the religious freedom aspect.

“We’re not getting into discussions about various autonomy claims that those groups might be making… I’m the religious freedom guy.”

He says he spent much of his first year developing contacts with different groups at home and abroad, with other governments and with Canada’s foreign service officers.

This year he plans to get projects up and running through his $5 million office budget.

He’s already earmarked money for three projects, including one in Nigeria to promote Christian-Muslim dialogue and one in Indonesia where an existing NGO will chronicle human-rights abuses and report back to the government there.

Bennett plans to announce a few more projects in the coming months.

He also hopes to clear up any misconception that his job involves theological discussions. Although he is religious himself, and considered becoming a Catholic priest, Bennett said his goal is to promote basic human rights, including the freedom of expression.

On his U.S. trip, he said, he was struck by the increasing level of concern over the persecution of Christians in different countries, especially following the upheavals in the Arab world.

“You’re seeing the situation in certain countries where the Christian population is being wiped out.”

QUEBEC — Sparks flew on Wednesday as the province’s largest English language school board refused to back down on threats to use “all possible recourses” to fight the charter of secular values.

Despite a harsh scolding from Democratic Institutions Minister Bernard Drainville, who accused the English Montreal School Board of being “completely irresponsible” in the language it uses opposing the bill, the board was unyielding.

“Do you exclude or not civil disobedience?” Drainville snapped repeatedly at the three female board representatives appearing before the committee studying Bill 60.

“I think you went too far in suggesting you won’t respect the law. I want to give you the occasion to tell us once the law is adopted you will respect it as all good citizens respect laws of a society.”

Although the board’s brief makes no direct use of the words, it does say it will use “all possible resources at our disposal so that this legislation can never apply.”

Drainville started the day telling reporters that appears to mean the English Montreal School Board would resort to civil disobedience.

By the time the committee resumed hearings later in the day, Drainville was so aggressive with board chairperson Angela Mancini and associates that a Liberal member of the committee, Laurent Lessard, called a point of order, telling the chairperson that the hearings are not a trial and Drainville is not a judge.

But Mancini responded to Drainville by turning around his questions, asking whether he is aware that Article 37 of the Education Act stipulates schools must respect the freedom of conscience and religion of students.

And the spirit of the act makes it the duty of schools to teach students to respect religious diversity and pluralism.

The government’s Bill 60 proposes to ban the wearing of all religious symbols in the public sector, including the education sector, in the belief the symbols advertise faiths and young minds will be influenced.

It’s the first time in weeks of hearings that the committee has heard this argument.

“This is what we are asking you,” Mancini said. “Which laws must we disobey?”

We don’t want to disobey one or the other, but you are putting us in a position where we don’t know what to do

“We are before a contradictory situation,” added board education committee member Patricia Lattanzio.

“We don’t want to disobey one or the other, but you are putting us in a position where we don’t know what to do.”

Drainville also objected to the board’s line that the bill effectively gives the government’s blessing to bullying and intimidation, a violation of the fundamental rights in any non-totalitarian society.

“Are you saying Bill 60 is totalitarian or inspired by a form of totalitarianism?” Drainville asked.

But Drainville got no further when he tangled with the powerful president of the Quebec Federation of Labour, Daniel Boyer, earlier.

Boyer said his union is split on the issue of religious symbols and called on the government to withdraw Article 5, which proposes to ban them, so a wider society debate can take place.

The whole issue would be up for review in five years.

While the union believes in a neutral state, the ban on attire is “not an absolute necessity and no guarantee of neutrality” at this time, Boyer said.

The union, which represents 600,000 workers — 40 per cent of whom are in the public sector — warned it is bound, without discrimination, to defend any worker fired for wearing a symbol all the way to the Supreme Court.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/montreal-school-board-threatens-to-fight-values-charter-with-all-possible-resources-in-faceoff-with-minister/feed0std“Do you exclude or not civil disobedience?” Bernard Drainville snapped repeatedly at the three female board representatives appearing before the committee studying Bill 60Graeme Hamilton: Business leaders scaremongering over values charter like they did with Bill 101, PQ sayshttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/graeme-hamilton-values-charter-will-harm-precarious-quebec-economy-businesses-warn-a-disbelieving-pq
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/graeme-hamilton-values-charter-will-harm-precarious-quebec-economy-businesses-warn-a-disbelieving-pq#commentsFri, 31 Jan 2014 00:51:08 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=143281

The Parti Québécois government has seemed unmoved as the proposed charter of values has been assailed by jurists calling it unconstitutional and religious groups saying it feeds intolerance.

This week, however, important business voices are warning that the proposed legislation will hit Quebec where it hurts, doing serious harm to an already fragile economy.

In a written brief presented Thursday to the legislature committee studying the legislation, the province’s largest employers’ group urges the government to shelve the charter before it is too late.

“Quebec is in a precarious economic situation,” the Conseil du Patronat writes. “It cannot afford to legislate in a way that creates a perception of social instability. Neither can it afford to legislate in a way that creates the perception it is closed to the world.”

The bill has a provision to extend the prohibition — if “warranted in the circumstances” — to private firms that receive government contracts or subsidies, leading the Conseil to fear the private sector will be forced to follow the government’s lead.

“At a time when Quebec is competing with the entire world, the Conseil du Patronat considers it essential that we project as a society an image of openness and stability,” the brief says.

The opposition from the Conseil came two days after Louis Audet, the chief executive officer of Montreal-based cable company Cogeco Inc., told an audience at the Montreal Board of Trade that the charter will cause “enormous economic harm.”

‘It is being perceived as a strategy of exclusion fuelled by xenophobia — the opposite of our multicultural, open society’

After lamenting Quebec’s failure to create enough wealth and sketching out the challenges facing the province’s economy, including a per-capita GDP that ranks 10th out of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories, Mr. Audet said the charter would compromise Quebec’s ability to attract immigrants.

“Imagine how the message of the values charter is playing in other countries. It is being perceived as a strategy of exclusion fuelled by xenophobia — the opposite of our multicultural, open society,” Mr. Audet said. “It is not the sort of message likely to attract the immigrants needed to ensure economic growth, as some countries known for practising a variety of exclusionary methods — Japan or Russia, for example — have learned the hard way.”

Mr. Audet urged the PQ to drop the charter, warning that to push ahead would be to “play with fire.” Watching the debate over the charter unfold is “humiliating” both for long-time Quebecers and new arrivals, he said.

“The discourse of division and exclusion that the proposed legislation has brought about is worrisome,” he added, criticizing the “attitude of cynicism and intimidation” underpinning the charter.

Bernard Drainville, the Minister of Democratic Institutions who is responsible for the charter, said the critics are wrong to think investors and immigrants will be scared away.

‘Is there anyone who can really claim that Bill 101 harmed the economy?’

He accused the employers’ group of scaremongering, just as it did when Quebec’s language law, Bill 101, was introduced in 1977. “When Bill 101 happened, the Conseil du Patronat came out very strongly against it,” Mr. Drainville told reporters in Quebec City. “They used the same argument that they are using today. They said it would harm the economy. Well, is there anyone who can really claim that Bill 101 harmed the economy?”

The Conseil brief concludes with dozens of quotes from anonymous members describing the effect they expect the charter will have in their workplaces.

One employer with 2,800 workers said it currently has no difficulty accommodating religious minorities: “Bill 60 is thus arriving to solve no problem. To the contrary, this bill creates discrimination, favours the psychological harassment of visible minorities at work and harms the social climate. What’s more, we are going to lose top-quality staff and competent candidates.”

Unfortunately, the government does not want to hear the warnings of economic consequences. After Conseil president Yves-Thomas Dorval presented the brief, Mr. Drainville lectured him for not having anything nice to say about the charter and listed companies that have invested in Quebec since the charter was announced in September. “The charter cannot be that bad,” Mr. Drainville said.

Discussion of the Parti Québécois’ “Charter of Quebec Values” has until now been conducted rather on the same lines as discussion of a third referendum: as a theoretical possibility, but not an immediate likelihood.

The thing was so outlandish, so crude, so ugly in its implications and so obvious in its motives — to this day we have yet to be given a shred of evidence of its necessity — that the consensus was that it was unlikely ever to be put into effect.

Quebecers would not stand for this, we told ourselves. It was a throwback to an earlier time, catering to old insecurities, unrepresentative of the Quebec of today. Oh, perhaps it might fly in a few rural backwaters, but never in cosmopolitan Montreal.

At any rate, the opposition parties would block it in the legislature. Some watered-down version might pass, an affirmation of the secular character of the Quebec state blah blah blah, but the core of it, the ban on religious garments in the public service — effectively, a ban on religious minorities in the public service — could not possibly become law.

Indeed, as more and more hospitals, school boards and municipalities spoke out against Bill 60 (as the legislation is called), as demonstrators marched against it and lawyers denounced it as unconstitutional, and as divisions began to emerge even among Péquistes as to its merits, it seemed increasingly evident the PQ’s desperate gambit — for surely that is what it was — had backfired. Evident, that is, to everyone but the PQ leadership, whose response to this firestorm of opposition was … to tighten the bill further.

Well, now, here we are months later, and every one of these wishful myths has been destroyed. The PQ, far from dwindling to a reactionary rump, can now see a majority government within reach: A Léger poll, taken several days after hearings on the bill had begun, put them ahead of the Liberals, 36% to 33% overall, but 43-25 among the francophone population, where elections are won or lost.

That wasn’t a tribute to the leadership of Pauline Marois. Neither was there any great surge in support for sovereignty. Rather, it seems clearly to be based on popular support — enthusiasm would perhaps be more apt — for the charter.

While nearly half of all Quebecers — 48% — support the bill, according to Léger, that’s almost entirely due to the support it enjoys among francophones, at 57%, compared with just 18% support among the province’s linguistic minorities. The ban on religious garb, in particular, attracts even more support: 60% overall, 69% among francophones — up 11 points since September. And while support is particularly strong outside the metropolitan areas, it is very nearly as strong in Montreal and Quebec City as well.

But you don’t need to consult the polls to see how this is playing out. You need only look at how the political parties are reacting. Neither opposition party has come out foursquare against the bill, or even the ban on religious clothing. The Coalition Avenir Québec would restrict its application to persons in positions of authority, such as police officers or judges (as suggested earlier by the Bouchard-Taylor commission on “reasonable accommodation”). Marvellous: so only the minority police officers and judges would be fired.

And the Liberals — ah, the Liberals. After dithering for months, while various figures within the party freelanced a range of positions on the issue, the party leader, Philippe Couillard, emerged with a stance of such infinite nuance that it ended up contradicting itself more than the bill. The party would allow public servants to wear the kippa and the hijab, but not the burka and the niqab. OK: the latter two cover the face, which suggests at least some sort of principled underpinning. But then why ban the chador, which does not?

Such exquisite parsing has earned the party the ridicule of all sides. With the opposition in disarray, there is growing talk of a spring election, with Bill 60 as its central issue. What once was a theoretical possibility has become a real, and disturbing, probability.

By this point, Quebecers can be under no illusion what the bill portends: the expulsion from the public service of thousands of observant Jews, Sikhs, Muslims and even the odd Christian (among the bill’s other anomalies, crucifixes would be permitted, so long as they are not too large), unless they submit to stripping themselves of any outward manifestation of their faith. And the majority seem quite content with this.

Rationalize it all we like — a distinctly French approach to secularism, the legacy of Quebec’s Catholic past etc. etc. — but if the polls hold the province is about to elect a separatist majority government, on an explicit appeal to ethnocultural chauvinism. The moral implications of this are profound, and not limited to the province, or its government. They involve us all. Put simply: Is this a state of affairs we can live with in this country? Will our consciences allow it?

What, in particular, will be the reaction of the federal government? Will it defend the rights of local minorities, in the role originally envisaged for it, as it has pledged to do? Or will it do as federal governments have done since Laurier, faced with a determined local majority: shrug and abandon them to their fate?

QUEBEC — Fatima Houda-Pepin left the Quebec Liberal caucus Monday night, after a caucus meeting lasting about four hours, and will sit as an independent MNA.

Asked if he could not convince his own 50-member caucus, how he expects to win the coming Quebec election, Liberal leader Philippe Couillard said, “It’s one of 50.

“If I have the same percentage in Quebec, I will be rather happy.”

Houda-Pepin, the only Muslim woman in the Quebec National Assembly and a vocal opponent of political Muslim, walked out of the Liberal caucus meeting saying she could not agree with party’s opposition to banning religious symbols worn by public employees in Quebec, as proposed in the Parti Québécois values charter.

“I have spent 30 years of my life fighting fundamentalism,” Houda-Pepin told reporters. “I cannot talk out of both sides of my mouth — (saying) the door is open for everyone and at the same time that I am going to fight fundamentalism. That would not be credible.”

Houda-Pepin proposed to the closed party meeting the position of the 2008 Bouchard-Taylor commission on accommodating religious differences, calling for a ban on religious symbols worn by public officials with a coercive role — judges, prosecutors, police and prison officers.

Saying he regretted Houda-Pepin’s departure, Couillard said the party position, to be presented Tuesday, would define state neutrality in terms of institutions, not individuals.

And he called the problem “non-existent,” noting that no police officers in Quebec now wear religious symbols.

First elected in Montreal’s South Shore Lapinière riding in the 1994 general election, Houda-Pepin said she remains “a strong Liberal and a strong federalist.”

“I worked so hard for the Liberal party for almost 20 years,” she said. “There is no space for me.”

Couillard described the caucus meeting as “very emotional,” telling reporters all caucus members urged Houda-Pepin to stay, and said he did agree to give her some space in November when he proposed a review of the party’s position on religious symbols.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques BoissinotQuebec Opposition member Fatima Houda-Pepin responds to reporters questions as Quebec Libral Party Leader Philippe Couillard, left, looks on following a party caucus meeting, Tuesday, November 19, 2013 at the legislature in Quebec City. Liberal MLA Marc Tanguay, behind, Opposition critic for the Charter of the French language and secularism reacts. A letter sent by Houda-Pepin had caused discomfort with the Liberal caucus earlier last week.

But the party position, worked out by a committee headed by Gilles Ouimet, a former Bâtonnier or head of the Quebec Bar Association and Liberal MNA for the Laval riding of Fabre, reaffirms Liberal opposition to any ban on religious symbols.

When reporters noted polls indicating that most Quebecers favour such a ban, Couillard, pointing out Monday was Martin Luther King Day, said “the worst thing is to be governed by polls.”

A Léger Marketing poll published Monday by the QMI media group indicated Couillard’s Liberals have slipped to second place, with 33 per cent, behind the PQ at 36 per cent.

Asked whether Houda-Pepin could be a Liberal candidate again, Couillard said, “In the present situation, it does not seem possible to me.”

“I did not hear from her mouth the words I wanted to hear, the words solidarity and commitment,” he said.

Couillard noted that observers were pointing to a “vagueness,” in the Liberal position on the PQ charter, “the impression of a leadership that did not exist.”

Observers found “there was no commitment, no consensus,” he said. “That is not the case. It is finished. It should be finished today.

“As a political party, there comes a time to say it’s over. We have to make decisions.”

Couillard would not say Houda-Pepin had been expelled, and Houda-Pepin said she wanted to stay in the Liberal party, calling it “a major institution.”

“Unfortunately the Liberal party of Mr. Couillard does not allow me to have the freedom of action to continue within the caucus with my colleagues to debate these questions,” she said.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/there-is-no-space-for-me-quebec-mna-quits-liberal-party-over-values-charter/feed0stdQuebec Liberal MLA Fatima Houda-Pepin is surrounded by reporters as she walks to a party caucus meeting Monday, January 20, 2014 at the legislature in Quebec City. Houda-Pepin has expressed dissension toward her party's position on the proposed charter of values.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques BoissinotGraeme Hamilton: PQ could ride values charter support to a majority governmenthttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/graeme-hamilton-pq-could-ride-values-charter-support-to-a-majority-government
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/graeme-hamilton-pq-could-ride-values-charter-support-to-a-majority-government#commentsTue, 21 Jan 2014 00:50:21 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=142223

MONTREAL — Between the critics tearing the charter of values to pieces and the supporters making laughing-stocks of themselves, the first week of hearings into the Parti Québécois’ signature project seemed to go badly for the minority government.

But a poll conducted on the weekend suggests support for the charter is solidifying enough to push Premier Pauline Marois’ party into majority territory, increasing speculation she could call a snap election this winter.

The poll was conducted as a video featuring the testimony of a husband and wife from the Saguenay was spreading across the Internet. In a session Thursday, Claude Pineault and Geneviève Caron related their experiences travelling in Morocco and Turkey.

Ms. Caron said she was astonished she had to remove her shoes before entering a mosque in Morocco. Once inside, she asked her guide what the men were doing on the floor and was told they were praying.

“ ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Praying on all fours on the ground on little carpets.’ Then I said, ‘What the heck is that all about?’ ”

Mr. Pineault complained about the “disturbing” calls to prayer he had to endure while visiting Istanbul. He also related an attempted pickpocketing in a Morocco bazaar by people wearing Muslim veils as an argument for Quebec banning such face-coverings in public.

“It is unthinkable to allow people to walk around in Quebec, in the streets, in public, in fact, anywhere except homes or private places, with such disguises,” he said.

The couple in their 70s leaped at the opportunity to appear before a legislature committee studying the charter of values. Under the rules of the consultation, they were given an hour to vent their opinions. With about 250 people and groups registered to appear, the hearings could stretch into April.

Unlike an earlier presenter who called a pro-charter columnist a racist and was told by Democratic Institutions Minister Bernard Drainville to withdraw his remark, Mr. Pineault and Ms. Caron drew no criticism from committee members. Mr. Drainville politely reminded Mr. Pineault “the vast majority” of immigrants to Quebec integrate well, but he agreed there are some who demand “accommodations” that go too far.

While the Saguenay couple and others were expressing their fears and exposing their ignorance, critics warned the charter’s ban on the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols by public-sector workers infringed fundamental rights.

Severely critical briefs from the Quebec Bar and Quebec’s human rights commission were made public, and Michel Seymour, a Université de Montréal philosophy professor and a sovereigntist, accused the PQ of nourishing a “nationalism of resentment” with its charter.

But a Léger Marketing poll published Monday in the Journal de Montréal suggests in the court of public opinion, the Mr. Pineaults and Ms. Carons are winning out over the lawyers and philosophers who criticize the charter.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhFfkxTrkbw&w=640&h=390]

The poll found 60% of respondents – and 69% of francophones – favour banning the wearing of religious symbols by public servants. Among those with a mother tongue other than French, 67% opposed, revealing a clear linguistic split.

The sharp division has helped propel the PQ to its highest score since before the September 2012 election. It leads the Liberals 36% to 33%, but most importantly, among the francophone voters who decide provincial elections, the lead widens to 43% to 25%.

Christian Bourque, a Léger vice-president, said would be enough to give the PQ a slim majority.

The PQ gains come at the expense of the Liberals and the third-place Coalition Avenir Québec, which has dropped to 17%, down 10 points from the election.

Ms. Marois, who is on a trade mission to Europe this week, said Monday she is focused on creating jobs, rather than fighting an election, but she may conclude the timing will never be better to go to the polls.

While the PQ surfs on the popularity of its charter among francophones, the Liberals are struggling to come up with a response.

Monday Liberal leader Philippe Couillard accused the Marois government of demagogy. “It has literally invented a social crisis,” he said.

But he added he shares Quebecers’ concerns about an increase in fundamentalism and their sentiment it is always the host society that must make concessions to religious minorities.

After getting drawn into an absurd debate last week over who should be allowed to wear a chador, a garment covering the body and head rarely seen in Quebec, the Liberals spent the day hammering out a final position on the charter.

The meeting continued into the evening, with dissident MNA Fatima Houda-Pepin facing an ultimatum from Mr. Couillard to toe the party line or leave caucus.

In September, he opted to stand on principle and declared the charter would pass over his “dead body.”

More and more, it is looking like he could become a political casualty of the issue.

“Never will I be the accomplice of this cynical government. Never. Never. Never,” he thundered. Thrice never! “We will defend and preserve our individual rights and freedoms at all cost.”

Even on the issue of prohibiting police officers, judges and other agents of state power from displaying religious symbols — as recommended by the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, appointed by former Liberal premier Jean Charest — Mr. Couillard seemed deeply uncomfortable.

It was a natural stance for a liberal party to take: The so-called “charter of values” is a cynically motivated solution to problems that mostly don’t exist. Unfortunately, it has all been downhill from there. While the PQ held fast and even hardened its position, and learned voices spoke out in opposition — former political leaders, academics and media commentators both anglophone and francophone, the provincial Human Rights Commission, most recently the Quebec Bar Association — the Liberals succumbed to doubts, internal divisions and political malpractice.

Language and secularism critic Marc Tanguay managed to plant a red flag on a wild hypothetical: The Liberals would accept a political candidate who wore an Iranian-style chador, he said. (Mr. Couillard could probably lead the party for a thousand years without encountering the issue in real life.) When the National Assembly’s sole Muslim member, Liberal Fatima Houda-Pepin, publicly bristled at Mr. Tanguay’s statement, Mr. Couillard first tried to brush the issue aside — and when that didn’t work, said he in fact wouldn’t approve any Liberal candidate wearing a chador. Suddenly, to the PQ’s delight, he was singing at least some of the same hymns as Bernard Drainville, the minister leading the PQ’s charge.

Related

“It’s the world turned upside down,” wrote François Cardinal in a scathing editorial in La Presse last week. “The Parti Québécois imposes a charter that calls fundamental rights into question and raises social tensions, but it’s the Liberals who are on the defensive for two good months.… Unable to give a solid, coherent … response to minister Drainville, they have left it to him to shoot arrows when he should be the target.”

Indeed. There is nothing to envy in Mr. Couillard’s position: Popular opinion is both volatile and generally pro-charter. But surely at some point, if not by now, this endless waffling will be just as harmful to Liberal fortunes as staking out a solid, if unpopular, position. It’s easy to forget when reading the news, but the same polls that show support for the charter do not show that people care about the charter more than the economy, health care or other standard election issues. Unfortunately, in this respect Mr. Couillard is merely perpetuating a policy of terminal indecision that Mr. Charest instituted in government.

Testimony from the first week of hearings at the National Assembly into Bill 60 seems to confirm that while Quebecers are debating secularism and religious symbols in general, their primary concern by far is with Islam specifically, and (even more specifically) that religion’s associated female accoutrements.

These are not new or entirely baffling concerns. And Mr. Charest’s government proposed to address them by insisting that Quebecers’ faces be unveiled while giving and receiving government services. Yet Bill 94 was clearly never a priority. It languished unloved in committee, and died along with the Liberal government. Similarly, in response to overheated concerns over religious accommodations, Mr. Charest struck the aforementioned Bouchard-Taylor Commission … and then did nothing with its recommendations.

Mr. Charest might claim he was simply trying to keep a lid on a hot mess. But by allowing it to simmer for so long, instead of taking a firm stand in favour of liberal values, he laid the table for precisely the situation we’re seeing now: The PQ government has gone down a road we never thought we’d see a Canadian government go down, and the Liberals see no way to contain the damage except by meeting them partway.

Polls consistently show far more Quebecers support the charter in principle than would actually support someone losing their job over a religious symbol. The Liberals should hammer away at that disconnect — at the human cost of what’s being proposed here. But 95% of this debate is theoretical. It’s playing out inside a snow globe created by people with very unpleasant and cynical motives. The Liberal government’s failure even to try to nip that in the bud, and the Liberal opposition’s current plight, is a cautionary tale for every politician.

MONTREAL — As the first week of hearings into the Parti Québécois’ charter of values concluded Thursday, Yves Gauthier claimed the prize for the most peculiar defence of the proposed ban on conspicuous religious symbols.

Asked by Democratic Institutions Minister Bernard Drainville about the requirement public-sector workers not wear such face-covering garments as the niqab or burka, Mr. Gauthier’s thoughts turned to his doctor’s office.

The retiree noted there are a lot of women in the medical profession these days.

“Even if we are open and all that, it is not always clear, because having your prostate checked by a digital rectal exam is a little disorienting, at least the first time,” he said.

“I could not see myself, on top of that, dealing with a veiled doctor, with a burka or chador … So yes, especially as a matter of principle, I totally agree that services should be given with the face uncovered.”

Mr. Gauthier acknowledged his nightmare scenario was improbable, since a woman who feels obliged to cover herself in front of strangers is unlikely to be prodding his privates. But in a way his fears were representative of charter justifications heard over the first three days of hearings at the National Assembly in Quebec City.

Supporters, including Mr. Drainville, the government’s charter point man, frequently resort to their imaginations to explain why religious symbols pose a threat.

Thursday, Mr. Drainville let his imagination run while questioning another presenter, Gerald Cutting, president of the Townshippers’ Association, which represents anglophones in the Eastern Townships.

Mr. Cutting had presented a brief denouncing the charter as discriminatory, saying it has provided a platform for bigots to attack minorities.

Mr. Drainville replied people have gone overboard on both sides of the debate before presenting Mr. Cutting with a hypothetical situation: A young Muslim homosexual who has been rejected by his family because of his sexual orientation seeks medical care and is greeted by a nurse wearing a hijab.

“The young man can feel rejected because of the religious symbol worn by the person providing health service in this case,” Mr. Drainville said.

“Can you understand that the religious symbol can sometimes be a message of rejection for those who see it?”

‘Can you understand that the religious symbol can sometimes be a message of rejection for those who see it?’

It was the second day in a row he had invoked the scenario, and it reveals a fundamental flaw in the government initiative, a failure the Barreau du Québec underlined in a brief made public Thursday.

For a government to pass legislation that will infringe individual rights, it needs convincing evidence the law addresses an urgent need, the professional body representing Quebec’s 25,000 lawyers said. Anecdotes and made-up situations do not cut it.

“Decisions motivated by what the [Canadian] Supreme Court has called pure speculation cannot justify the infringement of constitutional rights,” it said.

Bill 60, the legislation enacting the charter, does not seem to be supported “by any convincing evidence.”

Mr. Drainville tried to dismiss the group’s opinion as a defence of the status quo, saying simply the government and the Barreau do not have the same reading of the situation.

But the brief, to be formally presented next month, represents a serious blow to the charter, reinforcing the opinion of Quebec’s Human Rights Commission that the ban on religious symbols in the public service would not withstand a constitutional challenge.

The brief analyzes Bill 60 article by article and concludes its legal foundation is shaky. The ban on religious symbols and restrictions imposed on accommodating religious minorities “would be hard to reconcile with certain fundamental freedoms protected by the Quebec charter [of rights] and the Canadian charter [of rights],” it concludes.

Paul Bégin, a former PQ justice minister, has said the best way to protect the Quebec charter from a court challenge would be to invoke the notwithstanding clause, which allows a government to override protections in the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms. The opposition Liberals, meanwhile, repeated their call for the government to release internal legal opinions on Bill 60.

Mr. Drainville insisted Thursday there is no need to resort to the notwithstanding clause. But he will need to come up with something other than fictional scenarios to convince people his charter is so urgently needed.

The cabinet minister behind Quebec’s controversial values charter says the Parti Quebecois is willing to make it an election issue.

The two major Opposition parties have made it clear they will vote against the provincial budget, which is expected in a few months, Bernard Drainville said Tuesday.

That scenario would topple the PQ minority government and trigger yet another province-wide vote — more than likely before the charter is voted on in the legislature.

“That would effectively mean the CAQ (the Coalition for Quebec’s Future) and the Liberals would be making the charter an election issue,” Drainville told reporters as public hearings began on the divisive Bill 60.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques BoissinotSamira Laouni appears at the committee Tuesday.

The plan has fuelled heated debates in the province since it was unveiled last year and some opponents believe the PQ could use identity as a wedge issue in the election campaign.

PQ Leader Pauline Marois campaigned during the 2012 election on an emotionally charged pledge to introduce a “Charter of Secularism,” notably aimed at restricting Islamic headwear in public institutions.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Quebec Premier Pauline Marois speaks with children during a funding announcement at a theatre in Montreal Tuesday.

Critics of Bill 60 say the legislation is unnecessary and infringes on personal freedom. They have also accused the PQ of focusing on identity issues as a way to avoid talking about Quebec’s economic situation.

The Quebec government argues the charter would shield the province from what it describes as encroaching fundamentalism and says it would provide protection against gender discrimination.

On Tuesday, Drainville called the proposed legislation a moderate document that offers tailor-made secularism for his province.

He reiterated that the government will not back down on the proposed bill, saying he’s convinced it’s a necessity.

“It’s a bill for Quebecers that reflects what we are as a society,” he said.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques BoissinotDrainville listens to a participant at the committee Tuesday.

“It’s a moderate, well-balanced bill and the kind of state secularism that we are proposing is going to be a state secularism that is unique to the Quebec society.”

Drainville said his party has worked very hard on the charter over the past year. He referred to the public hearings, which are expected to last two months and feature as many as 200 individuals and groups, as a first step toward its eventual adoption.

“I am convinced we need to pass the charter, but we can’t cut any corners,” said Drainville, the minister responsible for democratic institutions.

“Even if people are against the charter, if they have the impression they have been listened to and respected, they will be more inclined to respect it when it becomes law.”

Speaking in Montreal on Tuesday, Marois categorically denied she wants to go to the polls.

“We are not in election-mode or even pre-election mode,” said Marois, who was elected in September 2012.

“If the Liberals and the Caquistes want to bring us down, that will be their decision.

“We are not thinking whatsoever about an election. We’re putting the emphasis on employment and we have other irons in the fire.”

Again he invoked Thomas Jefferson as an ideological inspiration for the charter, even though Jefferson’s vision of church and state separation was about protecting religious minorities from state abuses — not denying employment on the basis of religious beliefs, as the Parti Québécois government proposes doing.

In an item published on his personal blog Saturday, Mr. Lisée goes on at great length about how hard it was to get his latest missive published. “It is really no piece of cake getting an article in the New York Times,” he complains. The Times hounded him with questions during a business trip to Rome, during a family vacation to Cuba and while he was out shopping for groceries in Montreal last week, he writes.

If only the Times editors had been more dogged, because in the final article, Mr. Lisée, a former journalist, gets away with distorting the truth on a couple of key points.

Here is how he describes the Charter’s most contentious element, the ban on the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols by public-sector employees.

[The Charter] denies religious requests for accommodations of dress in public sector employment: After a transition period, government workers would have to refrain from wearing conspicuous religious symbols — for instance, the Muslim hijab, the Sikh turban or the Christian cross — while on the job.

A reader who has not followed the Quebec debate closely (i.e., most New York Times readers) would be under the impression that the hijab, turban and Christian cross are on equal footing, which is wrong. All hijabs and turbans would be banned but most crucifixes — except for oversized ones of the sort favoured by Madonna — would be okay. Interestingly, Mr. Lisée neglected to mention that kippas would also be among the banned garments, something that might have been of interest to the Times’s Jewish readers.

Mr. Lisée refers to the PQ’s “decision to remove the crucifix that famously hangs in the legislature” as evidence that his party will not countenance having any religious symbols “breach the wall between church and state.” It sounds like a principled stand, but in fact the PQ’s principles are remarkably flexible. The current position in favour of removing the crucifix, announced in November, was an abrupt reversal from where the PQ stood two months earlier when Mr. Lisée’s cabinet colleague Bernard Drainville first introduced the Charter. The National Assembly crucifix was “there to stay, in the name of history, in the name of heritage,” Mr. Drainville said at the time.

Mr. Lisée informs Times readers that the Charter is “the latest expression of Quebec’s dim view of multiculturalism.” It is, he adds, one more example of “Quebecers’ dissent from the rest of Canada.” This conveniently ignores the debate raging within Quebec over the Charter, which has provoked verbal assaults on hijab-wearing women and led respected institutions to threaten civil disobedience.

To substantiate his claim that the Charter is “progressive and modern,” Mr. Lisée, who is also minister responsible for the Montreal region, brazenly misrepresents the situation in Quebec’s largest city.

It is, in fact, in cosmopolitan Montreal, not in more homogenous French regions of Quebec, that one finds the strongest supporters of the religious neutrality of state employees’ attire: 61 percent of the Francophone majority living in the city. (Admittedly, Montreal’s Anglophone minority is very much opposed, five to one.)

There has not been a lot of Montreal-specific polling on the Charter, but an October CROP poll for Radio-Canada did find that 60% of Montreal francophones support the Charter. Overall, though, 58% of Montrealers opposed the charter, including 40% who said they are strongly opposed. The only way Mr. Lisée can pretend that his project has the backing of Montreal is if he excludes anglophones and allophones, which doesn’t sound very cosmopolitan.

With committee hearings into Bill 60, the legislation enshrining the Charter, beginning Tuesday, the PQ spin can be expected to become even more dizzying. Instead of spending so much time fine-tuning his misleading New York Times op-ed, Mr. Lisée should have made an effort to understand the angst the Charter is causing in the city he represents. Since he claims to be such a fan of Thomas Jefferson, he could have begun with the 23-page brief to the legislature committee from the Jewish General Hospital, which quotes from Jefferson’s 1801 inaugural address.

“All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”

The hospital’s brief also quotes Ronald Schondorf, a staff physician who wears a kippa at work. He said he will leave the province if the Charter becomes law. “There are, however, lines that cannot be crossed, and I will not tolerate an era where individual groups are blithely deprived of liberties,” Dr. Schondorf said.

As hearings begin Tuesday on the proposed Quebec Charter of Values, a new public opinion poll suggests even some Quebecers who support restrictions on religious symbols in public institutions think the move is already fuelling stereotyping and tension among the province’s communities and is likely to foster civil disobedience.

The poll also found substantial confusion among Quebecers about how sternly any charter should be policed, with just over one-third of respondents saying they believe a person who defied the law by refusing to remove a religious symbol ought to be fired.

The poll of 1,000 Quebecers, conducted by Leger Marketing for The Gazette and the Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration, found 48% of Quebecers support the Parti Quebecois government’s plan to outlaw people of faith from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs, kippas, turbans or conspicuous crucifixes while working in government jobs.

That’s a slight uptick from the 46% who said they were in favour of a secular charter in a poll conducted in October.

But as in the previous survey, pollsters found a sharp division of opinion between mother-tongue francophones — 57% said they favour the charter — and respondents from other linguistic groups, only 16% of whom said they were strongly in favour of the charter.

Among people whose first language was not French, 55% said they knew someone likely to be directly affected by the charter. Only 22% of mother tongue francophones said they knew someone likely to be affected, with the odds dropping much lower outside the greater Montreal area.

Non-francophones who answered the poll were also far more likely than mother tongue French speakers to believe the federal government ought to get involved in the Quebec charter issue.

Fifty-nine percent of people polled — 55% of francophones and 79% of non-francophones — said they feel the courts should be asked to rule on the charter’s constitutionality before it becomes law.

Jack Jedwab, executive vice-president of the Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration, said findings reflect the confusion surrounding the proposed legislation — a contradiction, particularly among francophone Quebecers, between a desire for a secular charter in theory and persistent questions about how it would work.

The PQ government has said the proposed charter would lead to greater social cohesion.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques BoissinotTwo Muslim women demonstrate against the proposed Quebec charter of values Tuesday, September 17, 2013 at the legislature in Quebec City.

But Jedwab said results seem to show “a lot of uneasiness” in the air. He noted soft support even among those who said they endorse the charter and weak or “somewhat favourable” support among young adults, with only 12% of 18-24 year olds and 10% of 25-34 year old saying they are strongly in favour of the charter.

“There is a fair bit of confusion about what it all means,” Jedwab said. “People know it is a source of division and they are worried about its impact on the social fabric.”

Fifty-three percent of people polled, including 49% of francophones and 69% of people from other linguistic groups — said they believed relations between communities have already deteriorated since the debate over the charter of values began.

Forty-nine percent of people polled said they believe adoption of the charter will give rise to civil disobedience in public institutions.

Roughly half of those polled said they believe there has already been an increase in stereotyping against religious minorities. Fifty-seven percent of people polled — including 80% of non-francophones — said they believe Quebec’s Jews, Muslims and Sikhs should have an equal say to other groups in discussions about the charter.

Support for the charter was higher among manual labourers, retired people and people with incomes of $60,000 to $100,000 than it was for young adults, students and homemakers.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/quebecs-values-charter-debate-fuels-stereotyping-tension-poll/feed5stdSupporters of a proposed Quebec values charter march in Montreal on September 22, 2013, during a demonstration in favour of the charter which would ban the wearing of religious symbols and clothing from any public institutions if brought into law. Quebec's proposed charter of values has already been the subject of heated debates, threats of court challenges and predictions it will drive immigrants out of the province if it becomes law.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques BoissinotGraeme Hamilton: Quebec values charter sparks intolerant tone ahead of public hearingshttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/graeme-hamilton-quebec-values-charter-sparks-intolerant-tone-ahead-of-public-hearings
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/graeme-hamilton-quebec-values-charter-sparks-intolerant-tone-ahead-of-public-hearings#commentsFri, 10 Jan 2014 01:17:30 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=141176

MONTREAL — In a brief made public Thursday, the English Montreal School Board uses a schoolyard analogy to describe the Parti Québécois government’s proposed charter of Quebec values.

“We see Bill 60, in fact, as a bullying tactic,” the school board says in reference to the legislation enacting the charter. “The intolerant among us now have tacit support from the government to carry on their ways.”

And from next Tuesday, they will also have a podium, as public hearings into Bill 60, which would ban conspicuous religious symbols in the public service, begin in Quebec City. The exercise is expected to take about 250 hours and stretch into April, but in the end it is unlikely to accomplish much other than further inflaming emotions.

David Ouellette, spokesman for the Quebec branch of the Centre for Israel & Jewish Affairs (CIJA), said the 2007 Bouchard-Taylor commission into the accommodation of religious minorities at times turned into a “freak show,” with people venting their bigoted views, and he fears a repeat at the National Assembly.

“Obviously we are going to hear some very disturbing stuff,” he said, noting among the groups commenting on the values charter is one opposing circumcision and another committed to ending the ritual slaughter of livestock.

Even before the hearings get started, PQ warhorse Yves Michaud — who in 2000 was unanimously reprimanded by the National Assembly for “unacceptable” comments about Jews — offered an example of the tone of public discourse the PQ charter has sparked.

Any public servants who do not want to remove their hijabs or kippas should leave the province, he told the Presse Canadienne this week.

“And they will go to a country where it is tolerated,” he said. “If they want to go to a religious state, then don’t come to a secular state.”

Marc Tanguay, a Liberal member of the committee studying the bill and his party’s critic on the issue, said the 250 briefs received by the committee reflect “a clear division” on the proposed ban of religious symbols. But on other aspects of the bill, such as declaring the neutrality of government institutions and establishing guidelines for religious accommodations, there is a consensus.

The sensible thing would be for the government to scrap the ban on symbols and focus on areas where there is agreement, he said, but there is little chance of that.

“We know that there is an agenda behind this. It’s clear. The government wants to be re-elected on this issue and wants to build on a clear division of the population, which is a pity,” Mr. Tanguay said.

The CIJA and a sister group, Federation CJA, have submitted a brief on behalf of Quebec’s Jewish community. Mr. Ouellette said the document attacks Bill 60 as a “radical break with Quebec’s traditional model of integration and inclusiveness.”

The charter rejects pluralism and raises one religion, Roman Catholicism, above all others by assigning it special status as part of the province’s cultural heritage.

Mr. Ouellette said the PQ government is irresponsibly fanning the embers of the accommodation crisis Quebec went through in 2007, plunging it into an unnecessary debate that “risks damaging Quebec’s social fabric and the relations between the majority and minorities.”

The Jewish groups have agreed to take part in the hearings, alongside hundreds of others, both well known and obscure.

Among those in favour of the Charter are sovereigntist groups and such former politicians as Daniel Turp, Paul Bégin and Michel Gauthier. A group of women know as the Janettes, whose founder Janette Bertrand said she would be reluctant to be treated by a doctor wearing a hijab, has also submitted a brief.

Opponents include the city of Montreal, the province’s largest English school boards, a new group called Québec Inclusif and the provincial human rights commission.

“There are not really any big surprises,” Mr. Tanguay said.

“It is more or less what we have heard in the media over the last five or six months.”

Mr. Ouellette said CIJA is participating out of a sense of democratic responsibility but holds out little hope of changing the PQ’s mind.

Bernard Drainville, the minister responsible for the charter, has been dismissive of critics to date, be they former leaders of his party or legal experts at the rights commission.

“Clearly this is not a government that has been very receptive to criticism,” Mr. Ouellette said. “And therefore, we are under no illusion that the hearings will have a big impact on the government.”

The hearings’ real benefit to the minority PQ government will be to keep the issue front and centre as it prepares for a possible election this spring when the provincial budget is tabled.

“It’s their main and probably their only hope to be re-elected,” Mr. Tanguay said. “They want to build on that division.”

OTTAWA — A former Bloc Quebecois MP who quit the party after a disagreement over Quebec’s proposed secularism charter says she’s no longer a sovereigntist.

Maria Mourani made the announcement in an open letter, where she writes that she’s leaving the “independentist” movement because it has changed for the worse.

She writes that she now believes federalism is the best way to defend minority rights.

Mourani says she’s remaining as an independent MP and won’t join a new political party for now.

The independent Montreal MP says she’s been reflecting on her political beliefs since her expulsion from the Bloc Quebecois caucus in September over her public criticism of the Parti Quebecois government’s proposed values’ charter.

She said she decided the Bloc was not for her — “I had no place there” — but also had harsh words for the PQ.

“The Parti Quebecois of Pauline Marois has created a new political culture . . . .where you’re ready to fight an election on the backs of part of the population, elections based on fear, division.”

The proposed charter would prohibit public sector employees from displaying or wearing any overt religious symbols such as the kippa or the hijab while on the job.

She subsequently quit the party.

When she quit, 44-year-old Mourani said she was extremely saddened by the turn of events.

“Firing women from daycare centres because they’re wearing a cross or a scarf, or a man from a hospital because he’s wearing a kippa or a turban, I can’t adhere to such a policy,” she told a news conference.

“Was my expulsion from the Bloc the conclusion of a succession of events in which an election-driven strategy took precedence over the defence of basic human rights? I wonder.”

In her letter, Mourani accused the PQ of wanting to conduct an election on the “backs of believers.”

The federal politician says everyone is a Quebecer, without exception.

“I have come to the conclusion that my belonging to Canada, including its Canadian Charter of Rights of Freedoms, better protects the Quebec identity of all citizens of Quebec,” she wrote in the letter released Wednesday.

Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press/FilesIndependent MP Maria Mourani speaks to reporters at her constituency office in Montreal Friday, September 13, 2013 following her expulsion from the Bloc Quebecois party.

The criminologist was first elected in the Montreal-area riding of Ahuntsic in 2006 and was one of only four Bloc MPs to be elected in 2011.

The leader who cut her loose from the Bloc, Daniel Paille, announced this week he was stepping down from the political party for health reasons.

A statement issued in the name of the Bloc caucus in Ottawa said the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was imposed against Quebec’s will and has been an obstacle to the protection of Quebec’s identity.

As for Mourani, the statement said, “For us, it was clear that she was no longer a sovereigntist.”The Canadian Press

MP MARIA MOURANI’S OPEN LETTER:

Protecting our homes and our rights

Since September 13, 2013, I have been in reflection mode. After everything that I have lived through in the independentist movement and now the Parti Québécois’ decision to hold an election on the backs of believers and against the harmony of living together in Quebec, I had to answer a fundamental question before even thinking about continuing in political life: Am I still an independentist?

Today, after many months of inner turmoil, I can finally turn the page. I write these words with a sense of calm.

Because we are all Quebeckers, without exception!

For years I have based my political action on the idea of equal citizenship. There is only one category of Quebeckers: those who have made Quebec their home. The Quebec identity is built on the participation of citizens in society through education; democratic and community life; associations; the media; business; politics; and especially access to employment. We are all Quebeckers, without exception.

For me, this openness and the fight against exclusion are the best tools to ensure social peace and fight against all forms of extremism and fanaticism. Despite some tensions in the independentist movement, this political vision of openness has been promoted and has even prevailed for years. That is why I joined the independentist movement that, in my eyes, was inclusive and allowed all citizens, without exception, to be the founding people of Quebec.

The Parti Québécois brings together the largest number of independentists in Quebec. Its current political desire to exclude conspicuous believers from the public service is indicative of a change in political attitude.

In 1977, René Lévesque chose to make the Charter of the French Language fully subject to Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Today’s Parti Québécois has chosen a different path. It proposes to amend Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to, apparently, bring it in line with its policy of excluding conspicuous believers. Worse, the Parti Québécois has abandoned the customary practice in the National Assembly, since 1975, of amending Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms by consensus. The Parti Québécois is thus demonstrating that Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms is at the mercy of a political party, which, although having won less than 40% of the vote, holds a majority in the National Assembly. Lastly, the Parti Québécois has launched a debate that is dividing and hurting Quebec families without first having checked the legality of its proposal, even though Quebec’s Commission on Human Rights believes that it does not hold water.

Who would have thought! The flagship of sovereignty is nothing like it was before. There are still a few independentist leaders who advocate an inclusive vision of the Quebec identity, but they are clearly on the fringe.

Canada: the best defense of our Quebec identity

The ease with which Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms can be changed, even abolished, has convinced me of the relevance of the Canadian federal system. I have come to the conclusion that my belonging to Canada, including its Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, better protects the Quebec identity of all citizens of Quebec. I am no longer an independentist.

Yes, we can! Improving Canada and Quebec in everyone’s interests is possible

In 2010, on its 20th anniversary, the Bloc Québécois commissioned a survey from Repère Communication. The key finding was that the people of Quebec and the rest of Canadians were opposed on each one of the five Meech Lake conditions. Consequently, it had nothing really to do with Canadian federalism and the only option for Quebec remained separation.

However, the Repère Communication survey clearly indicated that 73% of Canadians and 78% of Quebecers still believed it was possible to negotiate an agreement satisfactory to Quebec. I, personally, am puzzled by this finding. Why isn’
t the party leadership trying to identify which changes would satisfy both Canadians and Quebecers? I have often heard it said that it isn’t the BQ’s role to improve the federation. While this attitude may have the support of the majority of Bloc Québécois activists, I believe it is one of the main reasons for the BQ’s defeat in 2011.

So you will understand that as long as I am a member of the Parliament of Canada, I will do my best to represent my constituents and contribute to modernizing Canada.

It was in this spirit that I introduced, on more than one occasion, a bill on human trafficking. I did not listen to those who told me it was not possible. After several years of perseverance, and with the help and support of many people, I managed to get Bill C-452 passed. Such a task is not easy. It requires discussion, negotiation, compromise, goodwill, time and still more time.

Across Canada, we want security and a prosperous future for our children. I am convinced more than ever that we can gradually restore the confidence we need to modernize Canada, in the interest of all Canadians, including Quebeckers, without exception.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/mp-maria-mourani-who-quit-bloc-quebecois-over-quebec-values-charter-says-she-is-no-longer-a-sovereigntist/feed6stdMaria Mourani leaves a news conference at her constituency office in Montreal September 13 after her expulsion from the Bloc Quebecois party.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press/FilesQuebec cabinet minister responsible for ‘values’ charter pulls out of debate because of apparent concerns for his safetyhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/quebec-cabinet-minister-responsible-for-values-charter-pulls-out-of-debate-because-of-apparent-concerns-for-his-safety
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/quebec-cabinet-minister-responsible-for-values-charter-pulls-out-of-debate-because-of-apparent-concerns-for-his-safety#commentsThu, 28 Nov 2013 18:08:02 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=395195

MONTREAL — The Quebec cabinet minister responsible for the government’s proposed charter of values pulled out of a debate on the topic Thursday because of security concerns.

Bernard Drainville said he had no choice but to cancel his presence at Montreal’s Concordia University because there was a real risk it could get out of control.

The Quebec Public Interest Research Group at Concordia had promised to protest outside the event, describing the charter as “xenophobic.”

Drainville said he decided not to take part in the debate because members of the group refused to commit themselves to keep the peace.

“I think we have to keep on debating respectfully,” he told reporters in Quebec City.

Never having witnessed fascism taking hold, I wouldn’t claim to know it to see it. But whenever commentators have likened the Parti Québécois’ proposed “secularism charter” to the early drumbeats of some historically dire intolerance, my first instinct has been to scoff.

It’s certainly stupid and unfair to threaten public servants with unemployment if they don’t forsake certain religious customs, all to solve a problem that no one except the pollsters seems able to quantify. It’s certainly disturbing that any political party would stoop so low in search of support, and all the more so that the PQ seems to be finding it down there.

But whatever the polls say, Montreal seems more cosmopolitan every time I visit. Despite reports of an uptick in anti-Muslim confrontations, surely it’s a fantastically unlikely breeding ground for any sort of widespread, street-level discrimination.

Related

Surely. But events recently took a shivery turn: A week ago, a woman spotted two daycare workers, dressed in niqabs, marshalling their young charges through the streets of Verdun, in southwest Montreal. And as one does nowadays, she snapped a photo and posted it to Facebook.

Thousands of people saw it. And not all of the commentary was polite.

“These children must have nightmares after seeing ghosts all day,” read one comment.

“Let’s burn these women and rape them like pigs,” another suggested.

“Two bullets,” wrote another. “It’s hunting season.”

Talk radio host Benoît Dutrizac took to Twitter, and the airwaves, to condemn the two educatrices. When one parent defended the daycare — “The teachers are great, the service outstanding,” she tweeted — Mr. Dutrizac rounded on her.

“How can you endorse the concept of having to hide a woman in public?” he tweeted her. “You should be ashamed.”

In Le Journal de Montréal, columnist Richard Martineau took the opportunity argue Quebec shouldn’t be letting daycare workers wear hijabs, either. Both are “insults” to society, he alleged.

The president of the Quebec association of private daycares — yes, this fracas is over a private, unsubsidized daycare — deplored the two women’s garment choice. “They must have their faces uncovered,” said Louise Chabot, president of the Centrale syndicale du Québec, the union representing Quebec’s daycare workers. “This is a must, especially with children.” Either she didn’t know that the two women uncover their faces indoors, or she didn’t care.

REUTERS/Khaled al-HaririA picture of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is seen on a central bank building in Damascus January 23, 2012

No one has alleged that the women or the daycare broke any rules. Nevertheless on Thursday we learned that inspectors had paid them a visit — not because of the media frenzy, families minister Nicole Léger avowed, but “relating to whether or not they are operating legally — if they have [the required] six children or fewer.” What interesting timing.

The proprietor of the daycare and the multicultural assortment of parents who patronize it are sticking up for these two women, as are some wise voices in the punditocracy, both anglophone and francophone.

Nevertheless, having broken no regulation or law, two productive members of society suddenly find themselves as this week’s living embodiment of Quebecers’ outsized cultural angst, the subject of public opprobrium and threats. I wouldn’t blame them if they were losing sleep.

And what did Quebec’s politicians say about this?

“This is shocking, this is troubling, this is not acceptable,” democratic institutions minister Bernard Drainville said on Wednesday.

He meant the women’s clothes, not the death threats and vitriol.

“This is why we need to pass our [secularism] Charter. Because our Charter will ban this type of behaviour,” he added.

It won’t, actually. Bill 60 as it stands doesn’t cover private institutions. But Mr. Drainville wouldn’t rule out changing it so that it would. And he suggested the Verdun daycare should force its employees to unveil at all times anyway.

The Liberals agreed. The Coalition avenir Québec agreed. Even Françoise David of Québec solidaire, the tolerant face of the sovereignty movement, insisted that an “uncovered face is a requirement for education and communication.”

Perhaps it is. I’m not sticking up for the niqab. But if any Quebec politician has conspicuously called for calm, or implored Quebecers not to go around photographing people who offend their sense of cultural propriety and soliciting mass scorn on social media, it escaped my notice.

It’s precisely the dehumanizing element of the photograph and the backlash that makes this so unsettling: It’s as if these two women aren’t citizens wearing something we’d prefer they not, but a phenomenon to be tackled. Societies can get to a lot of very dangerous places from that starting point.

So it sure would be nice to hear, at least, a few soothing voices from officialdom. Having lovingly nurtured this false crisis for so long, and for such cynical ends, the political class might want to double-check it’s still able to exert any control over it.

From the moment it applied the lofty designation of “Charter” to a hodgepodge of rules that would curtail the rights of religious minorities, the Parti Québécois government seemed to be suffering delusions of grandeur.

The diagnosis was confirmed Monday when the principal architects of the Charter of Quebec Values wrote to the New York Times to defend their project and portrayed themselves as successors to none other than Thomas Jefferson.

International Affairs Minister Jean-François Lisée and Democratic Institutions Minister Bernard Drainville were peeved by a Nov. 12 opinion piece in the same newspaper that said the PQ had “seemingly ventured into Tea Party territory” with a Charter appealing to the white, populist rural vote.

The Tea Party analogy had been made earlier in French by Jérôme Lussier in l’Actualité, but when anglo-Quebec journalist Martin Patriquin made it in the Times, he was roundly accused of “Quebec-bashing.”

Messrs. Lisée and Drainville write that far from living a “Tea Party moment,” as the headline on Mr. Patriquin’s article said, Quebec is living a “Jefferson moment.”

“[T]he proposed legislation the writer thinks is regressive would in fact enshrine into law Jefferson’s ‘wall of separation between church and state.'”

They note that a majority of Quebecers supports their initiative, which would ban the wearing of such religious symbols as hijabs, kippas, turbans (and the rarely seen jumbo crucifix) by public-sector workers. The ban, they say, is simply a “logical step” after Quebecers broke with the Catholic church in the 1960s.

Opponents within Quebec may be in the minority but they have been vocal. The provincial human rights commission said the proposed measures contravene the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital announced it would defy the law and women’s centres have reported an increase in verbal abuse of hijab-wearing women.

To the Quebec ministers, this criticism amounts to a few ruffled feathers. And you know who else ruffled feathers? Thomas Jefferson.

“In this and many fields, Quebec’s independent-minded choices occasionally ruffle feathers, especially among multiculturalists, still strong in Canada. But feather-ruffling is what trend-setters do. Don’t ask the Tea Party. Ask Jefferson.”

Of course, Jefferson’s not around to ask, but he left a few scribblings. And it’s pretty clear why Messrs. Lisée and Drainville abbreviated their quote from the founding father. Here is a fuller version of what he wrote in his famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

For a Jewish man whose kippa is a sincere expression of his faith — or a Muslim woman whose hijab is the same — being told to remove the symbol in order to work for the state could clearly be seen as infringing the free exercise of religion. And while the PQ ministers argue the legislation “is not specific to any religion,” it is a strange coincidence that the religions whose members wear so-called conspicuous symbols are non-Christian minorities.

But come to think of it, Jefferson also had a difficult relationship with minorities, except he called them slaves. The owner of more than 600 slaves over his lifetime, Jefferson’s reputation as a benevolent master has suffered in recent scholarship revealing that he condoned the beating of slave children in his nail factory at Monticello. Maybe invoking Jefferson in support of a law restricting minority religious rights was not the masterstroke Messrs Lisée and Drainville imagined.